Netiquette and Cyberbullying

Netiquette is etiquette for the internet. A list of suggested rules to follow in order to maintain positive relationships with people online. I found it interesting that while flaming is a long held tradition on the internet that a point is made that unnecessary continuation of flaming is frowned upon.

http://www.albion.com/netiquette/

The above link has 10 rules for netiquette taken from Virginia Shea's book. Included on the website is a netiquette quiz that would be good a pretest/posttest with students to measure the understanding of netiquette.


For parents with teens the site listed below is a great resource for both the parent and teen on netiquette and internet safety. http://staff.howard.k12.md.us/~gwynethj/internetsafety/internetsafety.html

The definition of cyberbullying according to stopcyberbullying.org is " is when a child, preteen or teen is tormented, threatened, harassed, humiliated, embarrassed or otherwise targeted by another child, preteen or teen using the Internet, interactive and digital technologies or mobile phones. It has to have a minor on both sides, or at least have been instigated by a minor against another minor."

The forms of harassment that many teens used to go through only at school has now extended to the home environment as well with the proliferation of internet accessible devices. No longer is home guaranteed to be a safe environment. It means that it is that much more important for parents to be actively involved in monitering internet access of their kids.
http://www.stopcyberbullying.org/index2.html

Since the harassment is often occuring outside of school hours and off of school property it is legally difficult for schools to discipline the cyberbully. Some schools have been sued when they have attempted to intervene. Parents need to be involved and communicate with the school to work in partnership to stop all forms for cyberbullying.